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It is probably just as well I never entered politics, dears. I hate to think just what sort of authoritarian junta I would be dictator of.

Having said that, a story from the USA just makes me plain angry.

At Hillsboro High School, Missouri, 200 students walked out of the state-owned school after one trans girl asked to use female bathrooms, instead of the gender-neutral ones she had previously used.

The story, which appears in Pink News, is somewhat convoluted, as it is claimed that she asked to use female changing facilities.

Lila Perry, 17, came out as transgender last year, and was apparently asked to use the gender-neutral changing rooms. Having lived as a girl from the age of 13, she asked to be allowed to use the female bathrooms, which appears to have been allowed.

The result was a walk-out by students in protest, and Perry had to be locked in the Principal’s office for her own protection. The protest appears to have been fuelled by parents claiming that she was receiving special treatment.

However, other students, of the school’s Gay / Straight Alliance, who supported Lila also walked out in counter-demonstration at the way she was being treated by fellow students.

For her part, Lila told reporters “It wasn’t too long ago white people were saying I don’t feel comfortable sharing a bathroom with a black person and history repeats itself. I wasn’t hurting anyone and I didn’t want to feel segregated out. I didn’t want to be in the gender neutral bathroom. I am a girl, I shouldn’t be pushed off to another bathroom.”

The students returned to class after two hours.

A written statement from Superintendent Aaron D Cornman stated that the school district “respects the rights of all students and appreciates the fact that the students we are educating are willing to stand on their belief system and to support their cause/beliefs through their expression of free speech.”

The statement went on to say the district accepts students “no matter race, nationality/ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. We will promote tolerance and acceptance of all students that attend our district while not tolerating bullying/harassing behaviors of any type in any form.”

So, what are we to make of this? Well, Lila Perry says she merely wanted to use the bathrooms (toilets this side of the pond) corresponding to her identified gender, as is the right of every cis person, and should equally be the right of every trans person. And of course, this highlights the fact that a great many trans people don’t want to use gender-neutral facilities – because they’re not bloody gender-neutral. Why is that so very hard for some people to understand?

Suddenly that’s been extended somehow to changing facilities. I am not seeing any proof that Lila ever asked to share female locker rooms. And of course, we see that bigoted parents are behind the lot.

The school district says that they will not tolerate bullying or harassment of any form. Then let them live up to their word.

If students choose to walk out of a state school in protest at a trans girl, then that’s fine. It should be easy enough to lock doors when they walk out, identify them, and expel the lot of them. To do any less is pandering to transphobic bullying.

And given the auld Scots saw “Fools and bairns speak at the cross whit they hear by the ingleside”, these transphobic students are learning their bigotry from their parents. So, time for them to be investigated by the authorities for instilling hate in the minds of their children.

Honestly Loves, you really wouldn’t want me to be in politics. I would make it so hard on bigots – of any kind – they would be scared to even fart too loud for fear of action being brought against them.

Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, USA has been jailed for Contempt of Court for refusing to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples, despite it being part of her job to do so. As she is an elected official, she could not be dismissed from her post.

Mrs Davis consistently refused to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples, stating that her religious beliefs as a Christian prevented her from doing so.

One gay couple managed to capture her on camera stating that she would not issue them with a marriage licence. She then continued to refuse to marry same-sex couples. When told she must, she stopped issuing licences altogether, arguing that by doing so she was not discriminating against anyone, but continued to draw her salary. She even appealed to the US Supreme Court, stating her religious freedom meant she did not have to issue same-sex marriage licences. They refused to issue her a stay. Earlier this year the US government ruled that all states must recognise and comply with same-sex marriage.

On 3 September US District Judge Dave Bunning found her Guilty of Contempt of Court for failing to comply with several orders, including one he had issued, and placed her in the custody of Federal Marshalls. Davis had said earlier she was prepared to go to jail over the matter.

Three Deputy Clerks in the same office have likewise been ordered to comply with same-sex marriage, or they too shall be jailed.

Kim Davis and her deputies are trying to claim that as they are devout Christians, forcing them to issue same-sex marriage licences is an infringement of their First Amendment rights, which guarantee freedom of religion. They do not appear to be too intelligent, as they are failing to realise that by refusing to issue such licences, they are enforcing their beliefs upon same-sex couples and are thereby infringing their First Amendment rights.

It is doubly damning as they are employed in public office posts, and the US Constitution guarantees a wall between church and state. Davis and her cohorts were therefore acting totally illegally and unconstitutionally by refusing to issue same-sex marriage licences by basing their actions on religious belief.

Kim Davis and her deputies of course base their beliefs and actions upon what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, in the Book of Leviticus;

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13, KJV)

Notice here that this verse mentions sexual relations between men. Neither this verse nor any part of Levirate Law says anything about two men (or two women) marrying. Indeed, contrary to what the bigots may think and try to claim, nowhere in the Bible does one find marriage defined as one man / one woman. In fact there is no definition of any kind of marriage anywhere in the Bible.

Kim Davis and her deputies therefore could easily have issued marriage licences for same-sex couples without for one moment compromising their deeply held religious beliefs. That they refused to do so can only mean they are either ignorant of the Bible, hiding behind the Bible to promote their own homophobia, or far more likely, both.

Levirate Law, in the very same chapter of Leviticus, has plenty to say on the question of adultery, however;

“And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10, KJV)

And why do I bring the question of adultery up, dears? Well, let’s just have a look at the track record of the oh-so-pious and righteous Kim Davis;

She married her first husband, and then had twins fathered by another man.

She divorced her first husband, and married another man, who was not the father of the twins, but who adopted them.

She then divorced her second husband and married the father of her children.

She then divorced her third husband and remarried her second husband.

So much for the sanctity of marriage. So much for being a ‘good Christian’ and adhering to the Bible. Seems to Kim Davis that it’s okay to discriminate against gays, yet she herself has flouted the selfsame law – on several occasions – which she claims prevents her from marrying same-sex couples.

It’s called hypocrisy, Kim dear, which is one more reason I am happy to see you rot in jail and I do hope a hefty fine follows. Step down from your job, Luv; you are obviously unfit to hold it.

Dears, I don’t know what has become of the dear old National Union of Students (NUS). When I was a member, more years ago than I like to think about, it was a welcoming, all-inclusive body where you could be yourself, nobody judged you and they fought bigotry and injustice wheresoever they perceived it. Today it seems it has become the haven of hyperfeminist bigots who don’t have a bloody clue about gay mannerisms or crossdressing, yet who are happy to make racist gestures.

On 25 March 2015 delegates at the NUS Women’s Conference passed a number of motions aimed at the LGBTQI community within UK colleges and universities. And, as feminazis are wont to do, they got it all wrong. So very, very wrong.

A bloody sad state of affairs when British students cannot spell “appropriating”, I’m sure you’ll agree, dears. That apart however, the motion claimed that white gay men are using affectations common with black women, explained thus;

“This may be manifested in the emulation of the mannerisms, language (particularly AAVE- African American Vernacular English) and phrases that can be attributed to black women. White gay men may often assert that they are “strong black women” or have an “inner black woman”, White gay men are the dominant demographic within the LGBT community, and they benefit from both white privilege and male privilege.

I have never, for the life of me, ever heard any gay man claim to have a strong or inner black woman inside him. If there are such, I’d just laugh in their faces. That apart, there are no other examples of mannerisms, language and phrases, so this motion is very much open to the interpretation of the NUS Feminazi Thought Police. There are many men in the LGBTQI community who are camp and effeminate. I happen to be one myself, as my regular followers are aware of. Am I now to be decried by some harpie on a university campus should I dare to sashay, as I am wont to do, or use camp language and phrases which they may associate with black women? Let them just try. My reply would be to shove a hand in the complainants face at full arms length and tell them, “Talk to the hand, sister, cos the face ain’t listenin’.”

Motion 503 is a terrible move for the NUS and is actually discriminatory on two counts; firstly it generalises about white gay men, and assumes that a great many use such mannerisms. That is homophobic. And were that not enough, the reverse side of that particular coin is that it generalies that certain language, mannerisms and phrases are common to black women. And that, my dears, is both racist and sexist in one fell swoop, as it assumes that the delegates know the minds of black women.

But onto the motion which most here will be interested in, and I do hope my fellow trans, CD and genderqueer friends are sitting down – you may need a stiff drink by your hand as well. Brace yourselves dears.

“To issue a statement condemning the use of crossdressing as a mode of fancy dress, To encourage unions to ban clubs and societies from holding events which permit or encourage (cisgender) members to use cross-dressing as a mode of fancy dress,”

The reason for this motion? That trans women (no mention of trans men) may find crossdressing by cishet men offensive. Hands up here all you lovely trans ladies who are at all offended by cishet men crossdressing. No? No, thought not. The fact is, as many who come here know full and well, that crossdressers and trans people have a mutual respect for each other and we stand up for each other. Therefore, this motion immediately generalises in that it assumes to know what trans women are thinking, and that dears is transphobic. Secondly, it attempts to drive a wedge between us CD and trans sisters. That ain’t happenin’ girls. Never on my watch.

The NUS has allowed dispensation in this for genderqueer students who want to use cross-dressing in their everyday lives as a mode of expression, or who wish to crossdress by dressing as a fictional character in fancy dress. Aww, how sweet of them.

BIG problem here, dears. If they seek to ban clubs and societies with encourage cisgender crossdressing, then they are up against the overwhelming vast majority of crossdressers. This effectively means that if the Beaumont Society, who give help, guidance and support to crossdressers and their families, tried to give a speech or host a help event at a college or university, the NUS would attempt to ban it, on the grounds that the majority of their members are crossdressers.

So the NUS would in effect ban any such group from giving on-campus help and advice to cisgender crossdressing students. And of course, because this motion would effectively do that, that could only add to the stress and emotional turmoil such students are already going through. Moreover, it is not outwith the bounds of possibility that a young student just ‘finding’ themselves, may actually be trans, and the NUS stamping down on them like this could actually force them back into the closet.

And just who do the NUS Women’s Committee think they are to state that a genderqueer person may crossdress but a cishet person may not? That is pure discrimination which not only does not understand crossdressing, it does not even attempt to understand it.

The entire motion is based upon the bigoted perceptions of women who are not crossdressers, and this shows in part of the wording of this motion; “which permit or encourage (cisgender) members to use cross-dressing as a mode of fancy dress,” That statement, allied with the ‘dispensation’ that genderqueer students can crossdress as fictional characters says it all. They think we’re all drag queens, dears. Yet again, they prove their complete and total ignorance of a subject they have not even attempted to research, or indeed, actually try asking crossdressers.

These motions were passed at the conference, dears, and have been widely criticised ever since.

Oh yes, that bit about racist gestures. To emphasise that some people find some gestures damaging, instead of clapping, those present showed ‘jazz hands’, after one NUS Women’s delegate Tweeted, “Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping as it’s triggering anxiety. Please be mindful!” For those of you not in the know, ‘jazz hands’ are where you hold your hands either side of your face with the fingers full open, and grin widely – a mannerism common to minstrel shows, where white men would ‘black up’ as black men, and sing songs synonymous with African-Americans in the US deep south. An act so racist that it is banned almost everywhere today. Oh well done. That’s very progressive, isn’t it?

So, well done NUS Women’s Conference for showing your uninformed and ignorant prejudice by giving your blessing to homophobia, sexism, transphobia, mysandry, and racism. But at least now I know why you call your decisions ‘motions’ – because like you, they’re full of shit.

Religion has destroyed many lives – gender recognition embraces and enhances it

I really am beginning to wonder if Pope Francis has lost the plot completely. In a new book, This Economy Kills, the Pontiff has comparaed trans people to nuclear weapons.

Claiming to defend the order of “God’s creation”, Pope Francis stated, “Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings… Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation.”

Utterly bizarre. Particularly coming from a man who is not only celibate himself, but who heads up a church within whose rules millions of clergy, nuns and monks, and even lay people also practice celebacy. Is that not going against the order of creation, which is to reproduce?

But he goes even further; “With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator,” the pope adds. “The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate. God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth… The design of the Creator is written in nature. If we fail in this responsibility, if we do not take care of our brothers and of all creation, destruction advances.”

Really? A sin against God, the Creator? Okay, let’s play Frankie’s game here. Assuming that God existed, would that God not have created trans people “in nature”? And herein lies the problem; that the Pope, who previously has claimed to be cool with LGBT people, obviously still considers gender and sexuality to be a choice, when it plainly is not.

As to seeing “man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate”, that has never been my experience of LGBT people. But I could quote chapter and verse of the history of Christianity (and other faiths) of eliminating people, including not a few LGBT people, who were a problem to churches, clergy and their fanatical followers. Just as there are LGBT people who are attacked to this day, some to the point of being murdered, many more who commit suicide, because of persecution from the religious.

And I would ask the Pope, or any who agree with him, while they argue from the psychological identification of transgender people, where do they stand when such differences occur physically, such as in the case of hermaphroditism? What happens when a baby is born with both sets of genitals? What when such a child develops as they grow into either a girl or a boy, of which there are a great many recorded cases? No doubt the God-botherers would claim that is different, because there is visible biological evidence. Well, I’ve got news for them; within each and every trans person there is visible biological evidence of their gender identity. Just because a girl is born with a penis, or a boy is born with a vagina does not make them any less girl or boy. The point being that to wholly discard psychological identification with a gender contrary to that of the cisgender binary is nothing short of complete ignorance of what is in fact a very complex subject.

To put it another way, as the wonderful trans girl character Stephie says in Sophie Labelle’s cartoon Assigned Male; “I’m not a girl in a boy’s body. I am a girl, this is my body. Girls have all kinds of bodies.”

And if we, still playing the Pope’s game, accept that God exists (except I don’t), then if he and his followers accept that their God can make human beings with biological differences which defy the cisgender norm, then it logically follows that any such God would be equally capable of making psychological differences. Or does the Pope reckon that his maker would only ever be involved in biological creation, and have nothing to do with the mind? If so, then that could be considered to be nothing short of blasphemy. Who then is the sinner?

But then, I need no lessons on nuclear weapons and the disregard for human life from a church who once had a member of clergy, Father George Zabelka, who blessed the crews of the Enola Gay and Bock’s Car; the planes which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given that he once said “One cannot kill in the name of God.”, if Pope Francis had any balls at all he would publicly revoke those blessings.

And neither do I need any lessons on what is and what is not natural, or morality. from any church which not too long ago castrated prepubescent boys purely in order to keep their voices high, which to this day widely practices celibacy – which is choice, not nature – against the very commandments of the Bible to be fruitful and multiply, and which still protects perverts who bugger little boys.

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr o Alba na Bòidhche / Happy New Year from Bonny Scotland, darlings, and sorry I’ve not been on here recently.

Well, on 31 December 2014 the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act passed fully into law, with the first marriages taking place on the stroke of midnight, when Susan and Gerrie Douglas-Scott were married in a civil ceremony and Joe Schofield and Malcolm Brown were wed in a Humanist ceremony, both weddings took place in Glasgow.

I am sure all my lovely friends here join me in wishing Susan and Gerrie, and Joe and Macolm, and all other same-sex couples who have wed heartiest congratulations and all the best for the future. To any who don’t – get a life.

Susan and Gerrie’s wedding was witnessed by Scottish National Party (SNP) First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) and Patrick Harvie MSP, Convenor of the Scottish Green Party. The involvement of the First Minister, who recently inherited the post from Alex Salmond MSP, in this wedding has drawn some amount of criticism, and not a few nasty comments, from those on the political right and the anti-independence media. They fail to mention however that Ms Sturgeon was invited by the couple to be a witness, as a personal friend of the couple. So shame upon the media for attempting to politicise a completely non-political and private event.

The witnesses for Joe and Malcom were Scots Makar (Scots equivalent of the English Poet Laureate) Liz Lochhead and Marco Biagi MSP. Mr Biagi is the Scottish Government Minister for Local Government and Community Empowerment, who had responsibility for bringing the new law into effect. An openly gay man himself, Mr Biagi stated “With a New Year nearly upon us, there really is no better way to celebrate than by watching these two people get married and make that lifelong commitment to each other. I am proud of our parliament in passing the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014 and proud of Scotland and the country that we are fast becoming.”

Hello Luvs. Quite a bizarre story has cropped up in the past few days. A movie of Paddington, the much-loved children’s animation about a little bear coming to London from Peru, has received a PG (Parental Guidance) certificate by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC). The reasons for this are, quote, “dangerous behaviour, mild threat, mild sex references (and) mild bad language”.

Really dears? Nestling among the countless horror movies (Children of the Corn, They Wait, Wolf Creek, Live from the House of Lords, etc) which make up the bulk of my DVD collection, there are a few children’s movies with a U (Universal) certificate, and which would fall under the above categories for the BBFC classifying Paddington as PG. The delightful romp about a boy trying to rescue little people, The Borrowers certainly contains what could be considered dangerous behaviour, mild (and not so mild) threat, mild sex references and mild bad language. Yet it received a U certificate and this is just one movie I shall reference in this article.

Comparing the two, the BBFC states that the dangerous behaviour is Paddington hiding in a fridge. Fair enough. But in The Borrowers we have the little people living underground and full-sized people trying to catch them, including going down drains. In Paddington the mild threat is a taxidermist threatening to “kill and stuff” the bear. In The Borrowers the daughter and her boyfriend are threatened by the father on several occasions. There are also scenes of actual violence in The Borrowers, and there is also plenty of bad language.

It is the mild sex references in Paddington however that the PG Certificate seems to pivot upon, and the reasons for referring to this are completely hypocritical of the BBFC. You see dears, their problem is one man dressing in female clothes and flirting with another man.

Going back to The Borrowers there is the scene where the daughter finds a very sexy costume to wear and to which her mother says no, but she gets it anyway, There are also flirting scenes between Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood and a boy/girl near kiss scene. I am sure any one of you could find many movies with U certificates and aimed at children where the content could be considered mildly sexual and flirtatious.

So it seems to the BBFC that so long as the couple in any scene are cisgender / heterosexual then these scenes are perfectly valid. Yet the moment any character veers from that, then it obviously warrants a PG certificate. Well done BBFC in your efforts in bringing up another generation of little bigots.

What I do find bizarre is that younger kids, like the toddlers Paddington is aimed at, would probably take the scene in question more in their stride and laugh at it, which was obviously the intention. It may have escaped the censors notice but pre-schoolers are much more interested in scanning the horizon for sweet shops than they are in gender and/or sexual diversity. It is actually the older kids, 5 and up, we need to worry about; the ones who have already had gender and sexual stereotypes ingrained in them by uninformed and bigoted parents. Frankly by giving Paddington a PG certificate, they are playing right into the bigoted mindset of those who lambasted Tinky-Winky in the Teletubbies as gay because “he” is purple, is topped by a triangle and carries a handbag (I say “he” but to the best of my knowledge the Teletubbies are gender-neutral).

On the other hand, if the media does not portray non-cis people to children, then however do we expect them to accept trans and gender-fluid people as normal? There is still a long way to go but it is widely accepted that the portrayal of openly gay and lesbian people in the media has created much wider acceptance. Indeed, the wider we portray all genders and sexualities, can only be helpful to non-cis and non-hetero children to come to terms with and accept that the urges within them are perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of.

The creator of Paddington Bear, Michael Bond, is absolutely appalled at the allegations. He told the Daily Mail, “I’d be very upset. I might not sleep well tonight. I can’t imagine what the sex references are. It doesn’t enter into it with the books, certainly,” Michael Bond is one of the greatest creators of children’s stories and animation ever, and one of the heroes of my childhood, as well as millions of others around the world. One can only therefore share his surprise at this ridiculous ruling by a board of bigoted cisgender censors who see offence where none was intended, and for that matter exists.

Poor old Paddington Bear; once a loveable kids character, now reduced to a life of vice and sleaze.

Mind you, even as a child, I did reckon Paddington was a bit gender-fluid. After all, that hat is FABULOUS! But Paddington, Lovey, please lose the duffle coat. It is doing absolutely nothing for you Dearie.

Hello dears, as I write this, there is only one day to go until the Referendum on Scottish Independence on 18 September 2014. And it pleases me greatly that Pink News held a poll in which 54% of the Scots LGBT community stated they would be voting Yes.

2163 Scottish readers of Pink News took part in the poll, in which 54% said they would vote Yes, 44% said they would vote No, and 2% were undecided. When asked which party they would vote for in a Scottish election, 35% said Scottish National Party (SNP), 26% Labour, 10% Green, 9% Liberal Democrats, 7% Conservative, 5% Scottish Socialist Party, and 8% unsure.

The First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament), stated “I am delighted this PinkNews poll has produced a majority for the Yes campaign, as well as the opportunity to build a fairer country that comes with it. It is a fantastic response from Scotland’s LGBT community and is a further demonstration of the rise in support for a Yes vote we have seen across Scotland. An independent Scotland will herald a new era for equalities, enshrining rights and protections in a written constitution.”

Now, I have met Alex Salmond and he is a lovely man who can completely disarm people with his warm smile, and who could charm the birds out of the trees. However, whilst it is all very well and good to speak of building a fairer country and enshrining rights in a new constitution, he may well want to end the funding of his party by the Stagecoach bus company boss, Brian Souter, a known homophobe who once launched a campaign to retain the notorious anti-gay Section 28. He may also want to offload the many Holy Willies in his party who are equally homophobic and who would seek to push their own faith in an independent Scotland – that is NOT happening. Those are just two reasons I am not and cannot be a member of your party, Alex Sweetie.

So, given the above, just how did we reach a situation where a poll shows that the majority would back independence and would vote SNP? Well, I reckon LGBT people are pretty well switched on and tend to be very intelligent. A great many will not have fallen for the rhetoric of the media who have continually tried to claim that the referendum is purely an SNP matter, when that is simply not the case. The official campaign for Scottish independence is Yes Scotland, a non-partisan, grass roots organisation, of which the SNP are but one of many parties and individuals who support it. Certainly, the SNP are the most vocal proponents of the independence campaign, but given they are the government in power in the Scottish Parliament and their raison d’etre is independence, it would be surprising if they were not. But to even suggest that the SNP are the ones driving Yes is as untrue as to suggest that the Conservative Party are the driving force behind the official campaign against independence, Better Together.

I would therefore suggest that the LGBT community are well aware of this (probably more so than the cisgender, heterosexual majority) and that is why they don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Then there is the House of Lords question. I happen to know for a fact that there are a number of LGBT people on both sides of the border who dislike the fact that there are 26 unelected Church of England bishops, the Lords Spiritual, many of whom are homophobic, who have the ability to vote and influence government legislation upon them. We dislike it even more in Scotland, given that the Church of England is the English established church, and a minority faith in Scotland. Little wonder then that Scots LGBT people should wish to remove themselves from that poisonous influence.

LGBT support for the SNP is little harder to explain. The fact that England may have well have got same-sex marriage before Scotland, yet the Scottish government tabled their Bill first, may go some way towards doing so. Besides which, the English Same Sex Marriage Act was booted through Westminster with indecent haste, with the result of all knee-jerk legislation, it is deeply flawed. The Marriages and Civil Partnerships (Scotland) Act, however, although it took much longer, is much more comprehensive and embracing of many more people. The Scottish Government working hand-in-hand with the Equality Network to make it so may very well have wooed a number of LGBT supporters.

And despite their funding from Souter and anti-gay religionists, the SNP government’s support for the LGBT community during the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow may have won a good deal of support as well. In Glasgow an LGBT rainbow flag flew over the city – after Green Party and SNP Glasgow Councillors forced the ruling Labour administration, who had downright refused to fly the flag, into a u-turn. The Scottish Government echoed this by flying a rainbow flag over the Scottish Parliament building in Holyrood, Edinburgh. Then came the First Minister’s speech at the opening of the games, in which he openly condemned the persecution of LGBT people in many Commonwealth countries; a speech for which he was congratulated by none other than LGBT rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

All in all, it seems that the 54% are correct in their thinking, that only an independent Scotland can safeguard and further their rights.

And should Better Together shoulder any of the blame for their failure in this poll? As much as I disagree with them, I would never suggest that Better Together as an organisation is homophobic. As the old adage goes, however, politics makes strange bedfellows, and some of Better Together’s are not so much strange as odious.

At one point Better Together put a rainbow logo up on their Facebook page. It had to be taken down less than 24 hours later, due to a barrage of homophobic abuse from their own members and supporters. This does not in the least surprise me. Better Together has attracted quite a number of followers from the extreme right. It is to their credit that they refused the Orange Order membership and refused to have anything to do with the Orange march through Edinburgh opposing independence. They have not however distanced themselves from some other far-right organisations, such as the Britannica Party. And if Better Together wish to dispute that, perhaps they could explain why Britannica Party Treasurer Max Dunbar, along with his BP cohorts, was canvassing on a street in Glasgow City Centre on 31 August 2014, with official Better Together banners and handing out Better Together literature. That of course was the day he kicked a pregnant homeless woman in the stomach, before calling her an alcoholic or a drug addict – he has since been arrested for the assualt. Yes, you never read about that one in the tabloids, did you dears.

As long as Better Together associate themselves with extreme right, often violent, and certainly homophobic individuals and organisations, is there any surprise then that the LGBT community will continue to be repelled by them?

Better Togther have also ran an extremely negative campaign, in which they have been caught out in many lies, used scaremongering, and their supporters tend to be argumentative, unhappy and often aggressive – as a Yes campaigner, I can confirm this, as I’ve been on the receiving end of it many times. Compare that to the cheerfulness and often party atmosphere of Yes campaigns. One in Glasgow on Saturday, 13 September, was almost carnival-like. But again, you won’t read that in the tabloids. It is little wonder then that Yes attracts people with our positive message, while Better Together’s negativity turns people off, whatever their sexuality and/or gender.

Whatever the rights and wrongs however, with really is just hours to go now, it seems that the LGBT Yes vote is in the bag, and I for one could only be happier if it were a sassy pink Prada bag, full of rainbow sequins.